Private school parents - why don’t you take collective action?

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Lots of private school staff are striking.

Head teachers are enjoying extraordinary hikes in their salaries. And there appears to be some kind of arms race over who can spend the most on facilities. Even bursary programmes rarely assist children where families have below average income or who might be eligible for free school meals.

The VAT increases bother parents on MN, but why don’t you take collective action as fee payers and challenge the HMC, GSA, ISBA or ISA on where your money has gone up to this point? Are you comfortable with so many independent schools using ‘fire / rehire’ for example. Is the level of stress this incurs conducive to the wellbeing of your children?

What do you think is going on inside a school when you see that teachers are taking industrial action against their employer?

That they will need if Labour win.

Okay so only the ones that are needed not just for disruption like the PP suggested. Totally agree with that.

Some of the examples of comments made directly to me on this site:
"Shall I show you my whole field of fucks I don't give"
"Privately educated, privileged sociopaths"

The constant accusations of being a Tory, having no empathy and shouting my privilege. The majority of people arguing against the policy are polite, respectful etc but that can not be said for a lot of the supporters of VAT, on this forum anyway.

Of course we have self-intetest, these are our DC we are talking about and, as any parent would, we are fighting for them.

I always try to go high when people go low and I understand whete it comes from but when faced with those sorts of comments constantly, it takes a strong person not to fight fire with fire. That's where the applying for state school comments.

We are being attacked from all sides but have the means to fight back. Private school parents won't just roll over without a fight and maybe Labour didn't quite understand that.

Private school parents won’t fight. They will either continue in private education and pay more or move to state schools.

There is too much stereotyping of what private school parents are like and an assumption that they are all Lamborghini-driving toffs who jet off to the Maldives and Courchevel each half term. The reality is of course very different and the group is far from homogeneous and there are clearly many normal people just about making the books balance on it. We have always voted Labour, as do many of our well-off (mainly senior medic) friends, many of whom also have or have had DC in private schools. I don't think any of the Labour voters I know would want to sock it to anyone and I would hope that it would only be a radical minority that would actively support such a policy if it were proved to have no financial benefit. I think the issue here is that it is a minority who are in effect directly impacted and that is further diluted by the fact that only some of those will really feel the pain of it. It's pure anecdote but most of our friends would just pay the VAT and wouldn't consider moving their DC because they don't have to. In a number of case it's grandparents' trust funds that are footing the education bill for them anyway and fees are all a bit peripheral to life.

Therefore successful lobbying and traction has to be on the back of wider public buy-in based on rational argument and credible independent evaluation (not ASI!) rather than anything like state school sabotage.

That's my humble view.

Oh they will, and are! Most of it behind the scenes with MPs, lobbyists etc. On an individual basis perhaps not but collectively yes we are.

It won’t be a problem though, surely. After all, apparently private school parents are making an unnecessary choice paying for an education when the state provision is apparently fine. We are constantly being told that the state sector can accommodate our children easily, so extra applications won’t be a problem. How is it sabotaging state schools? They can easily accommodate us anyway.

I suggest everyone apply for a state school place whether they intend to use it or not and see how the Labour government and those who vote labour get on with that. Watch VAT roll in (not) from the private sector and the standards in the public sector soar (not) thanks to the implementation of this policy.

@Another76543 This is what I was referring to, which is a post from earlier today. Such tactics would be intentional sabotage, if a state school place were not required. I think what is being claimed is that state schools could accommodate the numbers who actually switch.

That isn’t fighting. That is making arguments which won’t work. The Labour Party will have a mandate for it if they win the election and the public will of course expect it to be implemented, given that we live in a democracy.

So what, we should take to the streets?
That's nonsense, fighting DOES include lobbying, getting MPs on side etc and is much more effective than other types of action.
Listen to Starmer on R4 this morning, he purposely obfuscated the question and used very careful language ie "we intend", "depends on the parliamentary timetable", "as soon as we can".
The FT correctly identified that Labour needs a short campaign to prevent detailed scrutiny of their policies.

Well perhaps it’s the only thing that they’ll listen to. They’re not listening to rational economic reasoning. Every child is entitled to a state education and, therefore, is entitled to apply for it. In fact, perhaps parents should go through the appeals process in order to get offered a suitable school, given many local state schools don’t offer subjects which children at private school are studying.

@twistyizzy That other thread you quoted made very sad. We are dyed in the wool Labour and private school parents.

I was a lifelong Labour voter until now

I genuinely would have considered voting Labour and can totally understand why Conservative voters switched in 1997. There is absolutely no way I can vote for a party pursuing a policy which disrupts the lives of happy children and parents though.

For me it is the absolute refusal of the leadership to engage with private schools on this matter. The shadow education secretary refuses to speak to any private schools.
That's what made my mind up, their dogged tunnel vision with no room for discussion. To me that's not what democracy and politics are about.

Would you take away a state school place that you didn't want anyway from a child who needed it just to make a point?

But there’s room for everyone. Or so we keep being told……. And private school parents definitely wouldn’t be able to take places away from other children, so where’s the issue?

Well for me I feel I have to apply for a state school place because I've read two reports that say the expected impact is at best 5% of children leaving or not joining the private sector and at worst 30%, so I assume somewhere in between, both my children are at small independent schools and I don't know if they could survive a 30% drop in numbers, or where the tipping point that closes them would be, ideally I'd move them for year 7/9 but that choice might be out of my hands.

Whilst what you say about this type of behaviour / comment is true, on another thread yesterday someone referred to all privately educated children as "academically sub-par" - which is frankly a disgusting way to describe any child. So these nasty comments are definitely coming from both sides of the argument.

I agree with you.

That is something being overlooked; the fact that entire schools could close suddenly, causing a huge uptick in demand in specific areas.

The issue is where private school places that are requested for politics rather than genuine need could displace a child genuinely needing a place going into Reception or Year 7 and I don't think many decent parents would want to do that to another child in reality. I know people are angry at the thought of their own children being affected but surely that is not the answer and hard lobbying and persuasion of the general public based on strong argument is a sharper instrument to fight back.

People have tried lobbying and explaining politely why the figures don’t stack up, but no one is listening. We just get told we are “privileged”, “snobs”, have children who aren’t clever (one poster used a disgusting phrase which I won’t repeat), that we don’t understand the situation of others etc. It’s really no wonder some are considering actions which might finally get people to listen.

I think the point is to make the real consequences of this policy tangible. I have seen lots of poster supporting vat talk about it in terms of ‘one extra child per school’ and the answer to falling birth rates.

this policy has very real implications for my children, whether we can pay vat or not because there is the potential it will send our school into closure. Clarifying the potential impact of all those places suddenly becoming the state’s burden is a legitimate form of protest given the general disbelief that there would be any downside to this policy.

I think, infuriating though it must be if you are directly impacted, the people who are throwing insults and thinking in narrow stereotypes are not the ones who really matter in this. There are always going to be angry and irrational
views at the extremes on both sides but it is good to remember that both of those groups are minorities. I think for mainstream support, the target audience is where the majority of people are, which is either centre or slightly left or right of it. That's where politics and opinion are less likely to be based on dogma and more on indepedent rational and intelligent thought. Maybe I am just a sad optimist but I think (hope) most people are decent and don't want any children to suffer, irrespective of the finances or education decisions of their parents. I am no expert on the detail of all the different reviews but it seems that once there is more independent impact analysis, there will be a lot more weight added to the arguments. Labour will have to give a bit more away on the detail than they are currently, unless they plan to stay vague and backtrack. Either way it's good for the impacted parents - if they give more detail away, that gives more robustness to any independent impact analysis and if they don't, it sounds like they could well back pedal and/or water the policy down or stretch it out.